


Maybe This Time It Will Be Better

by florahart



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, First-Person Narrative, Gen, Katniss and Peeta's children - Freeform, Lingering trauma, canonical deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-13 15:29:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21157595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: Katniss speaks to an interviewer, post-epilogue





	Maybe This Time It Will Be Better

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveradept](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/gifts).

> As a reader I had enormous issues with _Mockingjay_ and in particular with the end/epilogue, and so that's where this went. Silveradept, I hope this suits what you meant by the ghosts of the games.

I always come back to, I'll keep trying; maybe this time it will be better. Is that what you're hoping I'll say, or I'll think? I'm sorry; I really thought I was done with this kind of interview. But all right, let's go with that. Maybe this time it will be better.

It's what I tell myself, what I've always told myself, every time I think about it, and I know it’s a lie, like every lie I told myself to get through each blast of the cannons, each broadcast, each time the game got worse. It can’t get worse, I would tell myself. I’ve made it this far so I’ve come through the worst they can offer and still, I’m standing. _We’re_ standing. _My_ team. _My_ family.

It was always a lie, and even though I didn’t know the depths to which they could and would sink, tearing apart Peeta’s mind and soul because a teenaged girl managed to defeat their previous most-deranged efforts – even though I didn’t know that, I did know it was a lie.

But that’s not really the question you asked, is it? You wanted to know what I took away from the Games back then, but telling myself I could survive, that I'd made it through everything else that came before, that didn’t come from there. That was always, that was how I learned to hunt, how I took care of Prim, how I made it through the months and years my mother just stopped. I think I was born with that, and I still have it: I can and will survive. So let me start again. Would you like some tea? Let me just, there. It's my own blend.

So. What did I take away from the Games.

I expect you think I have a polished answer, one that you can put in your headline and show the symbol and strength of the Mockingjay. I'm sorry, but I don't think this will be that. I always just wanted to be left alone to heal. But here it is. I don't know what my children look like.

Not – I recognize them when they come home at the end of the school day, of course. I can describe them. I can tell you Ebelbess has hair just three shades darker than her aunt Primrose, with a wave she never got from me. I can tell you her eyes are a muddy gray that goes bright spring green in the centers when she goes out into the sun, and I can tell you her skin is ruddy and healthy, never the ashen shades I always saw when I caught my reflection in a window. She’s had enough – enough food, enough sleep, enough heat – her whole life, and it shows. I can tell you about her favorites and how her hands make fists when she’s frightened, how she has that way with animals and such a bright smile it's hard to imagine she's possible. And yet, I can’t call her face to my mind. When I try, I see Rue as I saw her last. I see Prim, trying to save a boy whose leg had been shredded. I see Wiress, the blood running down and her eyes closing as she falls. I see Clove. I see. Well. I see them all. The Careers, the ones who know they don’t have a chance, the ones who put up their hands in salute and fell before the Peacekeepers.

Wiress, for the record, is the hardest. The worst. I keep thinking of all the sentences she won't leave unfinished, now. I'm aware that sounds unhinged, but then, I'm not sure my hinges ever healed anyway. It's why I still see them all, and don't know -- None of the faces I see look anything like my daughter, except maybe Prim a little, around the mouth, but there they are, always and forever, and I don't expect that to change. I’ve always thought that if there were a new Games, that if I had to leave for several weeks, Bess would have grown and changed, and I might not recognize her any more. 

Where was I? It doesn't matter. Anyway, It’s the same with Kennick, who has dark eyes and hair more like mine but the same healthy skin. But when I think of him, Thresh is there. Cinna, bloodied and bruised and dragged out of my sight. Finnick, his body draining every drop almost before I can pull myself together to move. Cato, with my arrow in his head. Boggs, blown in half and left for the enemy to find the pieces of. All of them were someone’s son, someone’s idea of what a son is, and all of them are gone.

So, what did I take away from the Games, before? I think it’s more what they took from me. I avoid thinking of my own children, whom I am supposed to love and whose well-being should be foremost in my mind, because all I see is pain. All I can imagine, when I think of them growing up in the world, is that they, too, must die. Peeta always says of course I would recognize them after some time away, that any mother would, but he doesn’t know that when they aren’t with me, I put them out of my mind unless he says their names, and when he does, I see dead people. How would I tell him that? I don't know why I'm telling you, except that with everything that's happening, I suppose someone needs to know the cost.

The thing is, he needed children, and I needed to do what he needed. I'd lost the skill of looking after my own interests, and so I had babies. And now, they need to stay here with him, while I... 

Obviously, I never wanted there to be a new Games. I never thought there _could_ be, that we could forget what it means to make our children into brutal killers, that people's bloodthirst would come back. I would have resisted, even resisted Peeta – not, that is, I mean the children. I wouldn't have brought them into the world if I'd thought the peace was temporary, you know? 

But here we are. Your question was, what did I take away, and all I can tell you is what I know now, informed by my time, twice, murdering all my friends. It's this. There will be no reaping. There will be no pair of tributes. Not in this district. If there must be a Games, the tribute from here will be me. Just me. If they don't like it, they're going to have to take me out, and the last time, that didn't go so well for them, so I expect it will be easy to force the issue.

My family? They're asleep inside; I made sure. I don't use the herbalist skills I learned from my mother often because they're part and parcel of the poverty of my childhood, but I couldn't chance them following. Or listening in. Or trying to stop me. 

I'm sorry, you're surely starting to feel drowsy now, too. Another risk I couldn't take, that you'd try to call in the medics. Here, sit down. Annie will be here soon, and she'll see to everyone while I'm gone. Don't worry. As long as I come back in one piece, you'll be free to file your report.

If I don't come back?

Let's cross that bridge when we arrive at it, don't you think? 

Meanwhile, I have more innocents to slaughter, and then, after, more children to bear, if Peeta can still stand to touch me.

It's not the life I expected, when I was fifteen, but then, that was never in my control, was it? Sleep well. I'll see you when it's done.


End file.
